because parenting isn't perfect

Worked for IT!!!! and DIY Gutter Bookshelves

This blog post is totally late, like I meant to write it Monday, now it’s Friday. That’s what life with two small children is like, time moves FAST. So let’s pretend it’s Monday and I actually got this up when I intended to, mmmkay. Thanks.

So your Father’s Day may have went something like this, special breakfast or brunch planned by you and some combination of the kids, some gift giving, unwrapping fabulous homemade gifts if your crafty, store-bought if you’re not, no judgment I’m a big fan of both, maybe a call to your own dad to say Happy Father’s Day and then maybe you had some fun family activity planned or maybe you just went about your day. I’d love to know, I always wonder what other people do since we do none of those things. Instead, I did enormasize Jeff’s Father’s Day E-Card on our massive I-Mac for him and then proceeded to ask him what he wanted to do, since I’m a slacker and had come up with nothing to do. He responded that he was in a home-improvement mood and wanted to do house projects. On Father’s Day? Yup! Apparently he wanted to earn his Father’s Day, maybe he thought if he worked for it, I would improve my planning next year. In my defense, he is the hardest person to buy for, although if you asked him he would tell you I was. So for Father’s Day, my husband, weeded our massive flower garden, planted a hydrangea for me and built gutter bookshelves among other things. Gutter bookshelves are AMAZINGLY simple, look fabulous and my son loves them. Easiest DIY project ever, seriously it costs like $20.00 (I’m pretty sure that included the price of a new hacksaw) and takes like 20 minutes, if I was allowed to play with the hacksaw I could have totally done it myself. But I’m not, some people just shouldn’t play with sharp objects, I may be one of them. So that was it, our Father’s Day, I did buy him some delicious dessert for after dinner when my guilt set in and then on Monday I ordered him a present, which will be here like next week. I would feel bad about that but my Mother’s Day present came from Croatia like 3 weeks after Mother’s Day. I think we just have a mutual understanding that as long as we get gifts, it doesn’t really matter when they’re given, except Christmas, I am kinda crazy about Christmas. I’ll post a picture of his gift after he gets it, because it is a pretty fab idea for any mothers out there looking for a gift for their husband. I love Etsy, have I mentioned that before.

For those of you interested in Gutter Bookshelves for your Playroom/Reading Area here’s what you do:

Figure out where you want them and measure out how long you want your shelves, you can have them meet in a corner, you will just need corner brackets or they can just be long shelves. I followed someone else’s advice and found that about 14 inches from the bottom of one gutter to the bottom of the next works well.

Go to your local home improvement store, Lowes, Ace, Home Depot, Menards ( I went to Menards where I baffled the man working in the Gutter Section when I told him I wanted Gutters to make book shelves)

Purchase as many 10 foot (that’s how they’re generally sold) sections as you will need based on the length of your shelves of open white vinyl gutter (you want vinyl so as not to cut the tiny humans). Make sure to buy end caps for each section of shelf, you will need both a right and left end cap, if your will wrap around a corner you will need a corner bracket piece for each set of shelves.

Pick up some dry wall screws

Pick up a Hacksaw if you don’t have one

Go home measure out the length of your bookshelf sections, cut with a hacksaw, put on your end caps and attach to the wall using your drywall screws with an electric drill, put a screw in each end and a couple in between, we used about 5-6 per 3 foot wide shelf because we have old plaster and wanted them to be secure. Wash, Rinse, Repeat and you’re done. If you’re really picky you can cover the dark screws with white paint or those sticker like nail covers, if you’re lazy like me you figure the books will hide them.

Voila, awesome kid accessible shelves which make your kids excited about reading, at least it did mine, and by reading I mean begging me to read to them, maybe this was a bad idea…Also I should probably keep my day job and never try to find one writing directions, sorry.

I’m not sure if the top one is not level or if just looks that way because we have the heaviest books on that end… I’ll have to work on fixing that.